A 4110: Requires certain school buses to be equipped with lap and shoulder seat belts

A 4110

Requires certain school buses to be equipped with lap and shoulder seat belts

NJEA supports A-4110 (Lopez, Benson, Swain, Tully). This bill would require that new school buses be equipped with lap and should seat belts.

Federal law requires lap-shoulder seat belts on smaller buses; for large school buses, however, there is no federal requirement. While New Jersey is one of eight states in the country that currently requires lap belts on large school buses, there is no requirement for shoulder belts

Because of their design, large school buses are one of the safest forms of transportation in a crash. However, they are designed to withstand front and rear crashes, not side-impact crashes. After the recent crash of a Paramus school bus, a side-impact crash, students were reported to be hanging from their seat belts. Shoulder belts might have prevented this from happening.

While adding shoulder belts to school buses will incur an additional expense for the buses, if the safety of our children is our highest priority, we need to do anything we can to make sure they are safe.